Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This was one of the most irritating books I have read. The story was flat, two-dimensional, and utterly lacking in likable characters, plot, or feeling. While you can find summaries elsewhere, there are three things that I think made this book so terrible: 1) The author is not American. This is okay—non-American authors write amazing things. The problem here is that she is a terrible writer with a limited imagination who wrote about a midwest town, that reads like a caricature. This shallow representation of life in Iowa comes across—especially from a European author with a European main character who is presented as wise and accepting and literate amidst the boorish and uneducated Iowans—incredibly condescending. 2) As someone who loves books, this felt written by someone who googled some top ten book categories (American novels, classics, chick lit) and then inserted them into the novel. I can't believe that Bivald actually read, or enjoyed, any of the books she mentioned. Her main character's thoughts about these books could have been lifted from the inner book flap. No originality. 3) The main character is one of those types who starts out meek and mild, yet by some grace everyone seems to like her, or she "grows" on people, through no effort of her own, no redeeming qualities, or no explicable cause. I cannot tell which of the above was more insulting to readers' intelligence, but I truly hated this book. It felt pandered to, talked down, and annoyed at a lost opportunity, because the premise was intriguing. The execution and the wildly inaccurate, unlikely, and superficial plotline were botched.